Shrodinger's Cat
by bethos
Summary: Narim escapes from the attack on Tollana, seeking the Tau'ri and the woman he loves. (WIP)
1. Chapter One: Landing

**Title: **_Schrödinger's Cat   
_**Author:** _Apocalypse  
_**Fandom: **_Stargate: SG1  
_**Disclaimer: **_Not mine at all, really, more's the pity…   
_**Warnings: AU. **Sadly ... Oh, and **WIP.**_  
_**Pairing: **_Sam Carter/Narim_

**Rating: **Er … I have no idea where this is going, so I'll blanket it as PG-13 and it'll probably stay there unless there's call for a sex scene (unlikely). _  
_**Summary**: _Have we seen the corpse? I don't think we've seen the corpse._  
**Author's Note: **_Hey, folks! My first Stargate fic. And it's _het_. Weird, huh?___

_Schrödinger's Cat_

So if you put a cat into a box … you won't know whether or not the cat is alive or dead until you open the box. Which means that while the cat is in the box, it exists in a state of flux – a state which contains both possible futures, one which contains a live cat and one which contains a dead one.

What this theory fails to include is that if you put a cat into a box, and you open the box and the cat has survived, the cat that leaps out of the box at your face with its claws out and its hackles up is going to be in no mood for explanations regarding the importance of scientific experimentation to the understanding of unexplained phenomena. 

Chapter One: Landing

Even traveling near or past the speed of light, the distance between solar systems with habitable worlds is incredibly, mind-bogglingly far. As a matter of fact, any planetary system with a sun with a suitable gravitational field to draw in planets, asteroid belts, comets and other spatial debris … is probably going to be pretty far from any other star whose planets can support life.

Therefore, when your planet is basically obliterated, it takes an extraordinary amount of luck to find another inhabited planet within a traversable distance. 

However, sometimes it's possible to make your own luck.

The tiny ship that sped at superlight speed away from what was left of the planet that had birthed it had only two life-forms as occupants. There would have been more, but the others had been destroyed during the escape. 

One of the occupants was human … more or less. His people had another name, but then again, he was probably the only one of his people to have survived the attentions of the Go'auld.

There was only one anchor left in his universe and he knew that at all costs he had to find it. He'd been seeking it now for quite some time.

He'd wept for his home, for his friends, for his people. He'd grieved quietly for them as he sped away into the vastness of the universe. And then, because the only way to survive in this life is to live it, he'd made steps to move on, always traveling towards the nearest inhabited planetary system, aware that it would take at least a year to get there even at this speed. There had been better ships, better engines, on the world … but beggars could not be choosers. Better ways to travel, ways that did not involve a ship strong enough to escape the planetary atmosphere, let alone the gravitational pull of the solar system … but he had taken what he could find and he had gotten out.

That this was an act that some might consider cowardly crossed his mind once or twice, but there was self-preservation to be considered … and there was justice to be sought for. Whether he sought justice or vengeance he was not sure, but he knew where he was going and he was certain they would be glad to have him, glad to help him find whatever he sought.

He hoped that _she_ would be glad to see him, too … even as he dared not hope it. 

The other occupant was not human, and it was hungry. They had both been hungry for some time now.

The pilot took a deep breath and then he let it out. It wasn't that breathing was any special effort, but when you'd been alone in space with no one but your pet cat for a year and a half, having left behind almost everything you had been close to or cared about, sometimes you have to remember to breathe.

_Almost everything_. But not all, oh, no, not all. Not the most important thing. That was waiting for him … somewhere …

She was waiting for him, even if she didn't know it yet.

"All right," he said to the cat. "Planetary approach. You'd better come here."

The cat looked at him for a moment, as though trying to decide whether or not it was beneath its dignity to comply with the request. 

"I'm not sure how equipped we are for reentry," he said warningly, holding out his arms. "You're going to be much safer in my lap, Schrödinger."

The cat hesitated for just a moment longer before leaping onto his lap. 

The pilot keyed in the code for planetary reentry and leaned back in his seat, preparing himself physically for the enormous amount of stress the ship would take as it shot through the atmosphere. If the heat-shielding technology held out, they would probably survive. If it didn't, they'd be incinerated. There was nothing to be done either way; he had to have faith in the technological know-how of his people's scientists and the capacity of his people's engineers to create a ship with a heat-shield that wouldn't malfunction at a critical moment. That was all he could do. 

But somehow he felt that he owed them that confidence. 

The cat was nowhere near as sanguine about this. It kept kneading his chest with its claws out. The pain was only minor discomfort, though, really. He had never really had the heart to punish the cat when it misbehaved. It had been a gift … from her.

The little ship banked steeply and, without much warning, sped downwards into the pull of the planet's gravity. He couldn't tell whether or not it was his imagination, but he thought he felt the temperature rising. Everything seemed to be shaking as they shot downwards and Schrödinger was clearly not pleased with the situation, flattened as he was against his owner's stomach by the pressures of gravity.

"Hooooooold oooooooonnnn," the pilot managed, as the presets kicked in and the ship's rear thrusters began to pull against the planetary gravity – nowhere near enough to turn it around or stop it but enough to begin to slow the hurtling descent towards the planet surface. 

A slight miscalculation had landed them in the center square of a small population center. Either they would kill him, he reasoned, or they wouldn't. But there was certainly no point staying in here.

Feeling haggard and looking worse than he felt, the lone survivor of a grand and sophisticated race, he stepped – or staggered – out of his spacecraft and onto the neat cobblestones of the square, holding his pet cat tightly in his arms. 

"Hello," he said gravely, to the scattered and all clearly astonished onlookers. "I come in peace."

Sometimes things become clichés for a reason. 


	2. Chapter Two: Gate Travel

Chapter Two: Gate Travel

Sam Carter let the background noise of the mess wash over her. Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill were dining together a few tables over. They apparently hadn't noticed she was sitting here, which was just as well. Much as she enjoyed their company, she just had too much work to do to bother being distracted by their bantering.

"How's your day been, Daniel?"

"All right. I was researching the strange symbols that SG-4 brought back from that planet …"

"Which planet?"

"You know, the one with the …"

"Oh, _that_ planet."

"Very funny, Jack."

"No, I mean it, I know exactly what you're talking about. That planet. It had a sky, right, and these people, with hair, and teeth, _and they wore clothes."_

"Are you finished?"

"I guess so."

"Good. So I was researching the strange symbols that SG-4 brought back from that planet – P24-910 –"

"Oh, that's supposed to help?"

"We _were_ briefed on it, Jack …"

"Oh, very funny, Daniel."

"You know what? Never mind. I'm just not going to talk to you about this anymore."

Sam glanced at the ceiling, trying not to laugh. All right, she thought, so she wasn't getting a lot of work done. But it was great having friends around, even if they didn't know you were there. 

"Good afternoon, Major Carter."

Sam looked up and smiled. "Hi, Teal'c."

Her teammate was carrying a tray, on which was more macaroni and cheese than she hoped she'd ever see in one place again.

He sat down. "Are you prepared for today's briefing on P3X-R35?" he inquired, with his usual flawlessly measured courtesy. 

Sam made a face. "Well, I'm getting there," she said. "I've still got to finish the analysis on SG-2's report, though. Evidently there's something peculiar introduced to their water there that SG-2 thinks we ought to check out …"

"I am certain your analysis will prove most informative, Major Carter," Teal'c said, inclining his head to her. He seemed subtly amused about something, but then again, Teal'c often did.

"Thanks," Sam said. "If I ever _finish it, that is … how's your macaroni?"_

Teal'c looked down at it. "Tastes of chicken," he proclaimed, absolutely deadpan.

But before Sam could react, the klaxons that indicated unauthorized off-world activation rang out through the command center. 

"That's odd," Sam heard Daniel say a few tables over. "Are we expecting anybody?"

"Well, unless Hammond's got a dinner party going he hasn't told us about …" Jack said, getting up.

"Uh … Jack?" 

"Yeah?"

"You've got some whipped cream on your nose," Daniel said, in a long-suffering tone.

"Oh. Doesn't do anything for my complexion?" Jack frowned, wiping the tip of his nose off on the back of his hand. 

"No, not really," Daniel said. 

"I bet sometimes he wonders why he ever came back," Sam muttered cheerfully, as SG-1 converged on the entrance and headed for the gate-room.

But nobody seemed to hear her.

***

"General, we're getting an IDC," the sergeant on duty said suddenly, staring down at his screens with an expression of shock. "It's … it's the old Tollan code, sir."

Sam drew in her breath sharply. " … Tollan?" she asked. Her voice was fainter than it ought to have been. 

Colonel O'Neill looked puzzled. "Hey, weren't they all toast?"

As ever, the soul of tact: the wry thought balanced precariously over a sea of teeming wonderment and old emotions that Sam hadn't thought of in quite some time … could it be? 

General Hammond hesitated for only the briefest of moments. "Open the iris," he said.

"But what if someone captured one of the Tollan and got ahold of the code?" Jack said. "I was pretty sure Tanith fried most of their asses …"

"Jack, if one of them happened to survive and found a way to contact us," Daniel started to say.

"After all this time?" Jack said, as ever skeptical. 

"Yes, we know what you're saying, Jack," Daniel said, getting annoyed, "but if it should happen to be one of the Tollan we don't want to take the risk of them being dead on impact with our iris."

"If it's the Tollan I don't see what they need us to open the iris for anyway," Jack grumped. "They can just walk through it with their belt doohickeys, can't they?"

"Gentlemen," General Hammond said mildly, "as fascinating as your discussion is, perhaps you'd like to continue it another time."

For a lean, haggard figure had stepped through the gate.

He hadn't shaved recently and it didn't look like he'd been getting enough to eat. He also looked quite pale – paler than usual, even – and it seemed that he was not entirely steady on his feet, as though he'd been sitting for a very long time and hadn't quite worked out how to move his legs properly for bipedal locomotion … but the lean orange cat sprawled complacently in his arms was more than enough to identify him to Samantha Carter.

"Narim!" she exclaimed, her face white with shock. "General Hammond, it's Narim … he's alive."

"Well, well," Jack said, peering intently down at the newcomer. "Look what the cat dragged in."

"It looks as though he is bringing the cat, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c pointed out. His grasp of the Tau'ri way of speaking had grown excellently over the years, but sometimes it seemed as though the Jaffa treated misinterpreting Jack's slang like a sort of game. "Neither appear to be in the best of health."

"He looks like hell," Daniel murmured in agreement.

"Well," General Hammond said, glancing around at SG-1, "I'm sure you're anxious to greet our guest …"

***

As usual, Colonel O'Neill demonstrated the height of courtesy and tact: "Hi, buddy. You look like hell?" 

"Is there an echo in here?" Daniel Jackson wondered aloud. "Good to see you again, Narim."

Teal'c gave him a little half-bow and said, in a voice that expressed volumes without using more than the least amount of words, "I am pleased to see you alive, Narim."

And two words from the woman he loved more than anything else in the world, in ways that even he had yet to comprehend … simple words, yes, but they were worth more to him than a thousand spoken by any other voice. "Hi, Narim." All right, so it lacked eloquence … but what was there to say? 

He liked the sound of her voice. He'd programmed his computer to speak to him with it, back on the world that had become the Tollan home. But that was all in the past.

Narim gave them all an earnest smile. Although he felt only a shadow of his old, sophisticated self, being here among the Tau'ri left him feeling rejuvenated. He'd had the vague idea that he might be received pleasantly, but he had strong memories of the circumstances in which he'd last seen these four people, and to find the welcome here with no trace of the dark shadow under which he'd lost them was … beyond pleasant.

"Thank you," he said. "To say that I'm glad to be here would be … an understatement, in the very least."

"What happened to you?" asked Samantha, quietly concerned.

Narim stroked Schrödinger's ears absent-mindedly as he answered, beginning with a soft smile on his lips reserved only for Sam. "Mine was not the only ship to escape Tanith's massacre," he said, "but the communications equipment aboard my own was damaged beyond possibility of repair and I lost track of them on the sensor array shortly after I left Tollana … and I wandered ever since. I landed at the first inhabited planet I came across and gated here."

"What, that's all?" Colonel O'Neill looked surprised. "It's been …" His brow furrowed as he dredged through his memory. "Like years." 

Narim gave him a wry look. "Space is quite large, Colonel O'Neill, and my ship was damaged when I took flight … I made the best time I could."

"You must be exhausted," Sam said.

"Rest would be welcome," Narim admitted, "although I'd much rather stay in your company, Samantha."

Sam was blushing a little. "Er," she said, "right, but … I'm afraid I'm kind of busy right now … you know, with …" 

Jack snickered in a way that Narim thought was a little juvenile, but of course his was a young race. Teal'c was looking at him with an upraised brow, indicating amused surprise.

Daniel Jackson seemed mildly exasperated with the Colonel, although from what Narim recalled of their previous association this was not an entirely unusual occurrence. "I'm sure we can dig up someplace for you to stay around here," he said, pointedly ignoring Jack. 

"Thank you, Dr. Jackson," Narim said, weary but mild. "That would be much appreciated."


	3. Carter's Dilemma

Chapter Three: Carter's Dilemma

Samantha Carter felt conflicted.

It was not an unusual emotion for her and as usual she attempted to suffer through it without bringing any more people than necessary in on her anxiety. It wasn't that she didn't like Narim – she did, he was engaging and sophisticated – but his constant fawning on her, even as it flattered, made her uncomfortable. 

Ever since Tanith's attack on Tollana, she'd sort of written him out of the mental equation as a possible suitor – and strangely, that had made him more attractive. She'd started to idealize qualities in him and unconsciously begun to compare prospective boyfriends with his impossible standard … a standard only a handful of men in the universe could probably measure up to, and Sam wasn't even sure Narim himself was one of them.

It hadn't been a problem when he'd been missing presumed dead; it was amazing the perfect relationships you could conjure for yourself out of the ether when they were with people who were supposed to be dead. 

Sam considered herself a pretty independent creature and it had been useful to pull out the image of the impossible to compare the possibilities to in order to dissuade herself from making a change. Her work was her life and it was very important work; complicating things with a romantic relationship would be a mistake and she knew it well. 

She couldn't deny that there were attractions here and there, people she cared about more than she should or emotional instabilities that might have proved catastrophic to her career if she'd given them more than a passing thought … and there had even been times when she'd been close to swept off her feet through the power of devotion, but even those hadn't worked out.

So she'd resigned herself to being a single, independent creature, devoted herself to her work, and spent her off-duty time kicking it with the boys or with Janet, and simply didn't worry about the rest … and it had been a lot of fun and she was almost sorry to have romantic concerns cropping up in her life again.

So now the standard by which she had judged so many men and used to keep herself from getting too interested in them … was sleeping off interstellar jet-lag in some unoccupied quarters elsewhere in the mountain, and she was sitting here reading a report from another gate team without actually absorbing any of the actual information.

"Damn," Sam said, leaning back in her chair.

"Something on your mind?" Daniel Jackson asked without looking away from his computer. He was doing a complex data analysis on some shavings from an archaeological dig somewhere unearthly and had needed to borrow one of the lab's microscopes and computer software. 

Sam sighed. "No, just … I just read an entire paragraph without actually reading it," she said.

"I hate when I do that," Daniel replied. "Generally the solution involves … a lot of caffeine."

She rubbed at her eyes. "I was supposed to have this analysis finished an hour ago," she said.

He turned in his chair slightly, giving her a wry grin. "Want to trade?"

Sam had to laugh. "I'm afraid that you're a *little* out of my specialty, Daniel."

"Suit yourself," Daniel said, turning back to his computer screen. 

"How long has he been asleep?" Sam wondered aloud, glancing toward the laboratory door as though she was expecting Narim to turn up at any minute.

"About three hours, I think," Daniel said vaguely, not really paying attention. 

"He's been through a tough time, I guess," Sam said, looking back down at the water analysis report she was supposed to be working on. 

"Yeah," Daniel said, typing hurriedly.

"I just don't know," Sam said. "I mean, I'm glad he's alive and everything and I'm certain that whatever knowledge of Tollan technology he feels he can share with us now that he doesn't have to worry about betraying his own people will be more than useful, but … at the same time it's a little weird, do you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," Daniel said, scooting the chair backwards across the lab to take another slide from the box and then sliding back over to the microscope. 

"Because ever since the first time the Tollan came through the Stargate, he's made no secret of his feelings for me, and it's not that I don't like him but there's no way that I'm ready to commit to the sort of deep long-term relationship," Sam said. "And the really creepy thing is the fact that I don't think he ever even _expects anything from me, it's just that he _happens_ to be desperately in love with me, it's really unnerving."_

"Yeah," Daniel said, peering intently into the microscope. "Wait a minute, what does that even mean … there shouldn't be that kind of residue here, not unless there was an abrupt ice age or something … sorry, Sam, I'm listening, really."

Sam fought back a laugh. If she thought he was listening, she probably wouldn't even have been talking. "And I mean, he's so very devoted," she said. "Obsessive, is more like it. I keep picking up these men from all over the galaxy who are just natural stalkers. I mean, he programmed his computer to talk to him with my voice for God's sake … and I'm, well, I'm flattered – really flattered – but I keep feeling that I should be really creeped out by this …"

"Yeah," Daniel said, swiveling away from the microscope to type something else into the computer. "Of course you can't just make an ice age out of nothing to explain an anomalous residue … probably someone spilled their frappucino on the slides or something, sometimes I don't know where we _get_ these people, does Stargate Command advertise _internships? … uh, sorry, Carter, what were you saying?"_

Sam smiled happily. There was no one better to go to with your problems than a distracted Daniel Jackson – because for all his well-meaning positive energy you could be assured that he wasn't really listening to anything you were saying even as he made all the sympathetic noises that he was capable of multitasking enough to make. "Thanks, Daniel," she said. "You've been a big help."

"Er," Daniel said, looking up from his computer screen with a thoroughly mystified expression on his boyish face, "you're … welcome."

"I'm going to go get a Diet Coke," Sam said. "Do you want anything?"

Daniel apparently relaxed. This was much more familiar territory for him than apparently random affirmations of aid he had no memory of actually giving. "You could get me some more coffee," he said.

"Sure," said Sam.

It felt a little better to get things off her chest, even to someone who was little better than talking to the open air. She'd see what Narim wanted when he was awake – whether he expected anything from her, or whether he would be satisfied to continue their strange non-dating state that had been apparently been in effect the last time they'd met.

Generally, despite his obsession-level devotion to her, he had been good about making his feelings known without exerting undo pressure on her to commit herself in the past … hopefully, that level of emotional patience had not been traumatized out of him by his recent tough experiences. 


End file.
